Plus much of the cuts are to Medicare Advantage Plans where most of the money just goes to increase insurance company profits.
Other cuts are because money won't be needed to reimburse Medicare as much money for cost shifting to care for the uninsured as the number of uninsured decreases.

C'mon -- they want seniors to use their voucher to buy insurance on the open market? If the Dems can't make hay with that, each and every single one of them deserve to lose.

Issues like this highlight the reason that good policy makes good politics. The GOP came up with a great PR strategy and good bumper stickers, but their policy agenda stinks. Now that the details of the two approaches are getting scrutiny, they are in a huge bind. As bad as things have been for Dems in the past several months, they have the potential (and, I would argue, the probability) for being much worse for the Republicans. Their bad faith is about to bite them hard.

"There's a lot of worry that we beat the Democrats up on health care for cutting Medicare and now we're going to turn around and do it."

come on. They will do no such thing. THat would be governing. What they will do is continue to overspend, determine ways to maximize profits to cronies, and channel tax breaks to wealthy white people.

Yes, but, yes, but: "It's YOUR money, and you know how to spend it better than some damn bureaucrat!"

That's not only difficult to argue with, but it is simplistic enough for the average American to grasp.

So, while the Dems discuss arcane policy and engineer solutions that are fair, the Reps cut through the fog with slogans ("Death Panels", "Pull the Plug on Granny") that resonate with Joe Sixpack.

As Sarah said Saturday, "We win, they lose!" is a foreign policy we can all understand. . .

Only Democrats pay a price for hypocrisy, backroom deals and outright lying. Republicans almost never do - at least not since Watergate. They have a much more effective propaganda machine!

Why doesn't anyone ridicule the fact that the Republicans' plan will only eliminate the deficit in 50 years !

Granting that the Republican plan (what we know of it) doesn't amount to much... I'm not sure we should call the Democratic proposals brilliant. The net-net, for instance, of eviscerating Medicare Advantage payments will be about the same as what happened last time the government experimented in Medicare managed care: most seniors will be dropped, and for a number of them (often more rural with less access to centers of care), there won't be good alternatives in conventional Medicare.

All the hopes pinned on "increased efficiencies", incentivizing different behaviors, and not covering needless drugs amount to... well, hopes. The broad approach of fee for service will remain intact; the incentives it creates (more procedures) will continue, and there will be little, if any, real interest in lowering reimbursement rates. If anything, given the howls of docs and the reluctance of Congress to make hard choices that might anger seniors, reimbursement rates are probably likely to go up in some form.

In the end, I'm guessing, we'll get some sort of "good news" that Medicare's rate of increase won't be as big as it could have been, and some modest savings will be touted as big gains... but the overall result is more spending on more Medicare. The real big lie is that Republicans have any more spine about making the hard choices than Democrats do; neither party does, and without making some... we're not doing what is needed to get Medicare under anything resembling cost control. That's the bottom line.

If we go the privatization route as suggested by the Repubs, can you imagine your 80 year old parent (who is cognitively impaired) trying to figure out which is the best health plan on which to spend his/her medicare voucher. Cause we know health insurance companies don't add fine print and unintelligeble legal jargon to their healthcare plans, so mom or dad should be able to figure it out.